Vance Christiaanse’s Reviews > The Origins of Christian Morality: The First Two Centuries > Status Update

Even read the notes.

Chapter 10 was about how the eschaton influences Christian morality. One example is judgment: we Christians shouldn't get -too- caught up in judging others since soon God will be judging all of us.

Chapter 9: an overview of God.

The chapter on "the body". As with "the world" there is tension between two extremes.

Chapter 7 was on the Christian view of evil. Demons and our own tendency to sin.

My notes on this chapter from 27 years ago are very disturbing. I was a very different person then.

The chapter on "The Language of Obligation" was hard to read (perhaps I'm just not smart enough) but the content seems helpful and important. It would be an interesting exercise for me to try to summarize it in my own words.

How does Christian morality differ from non-Christian morality? In one sense they are very similar; in a deeper sense they are very different.

So. Chapter 2, Conversion. Meeks points out that there are many kinds of conversion, including lots that have nothing to do with Christianity. One interesting point: Meeks points out the tension within Christianity between rejecting "the world" and also, at the same time, defining its own morality in terms of "the world". (Example, not in book: Christian morality used to be exactly the same as middle-class American.)

Chapter 1 is an overview of the ten facets of the early Christian ethnos we'll be looking at. They all sound very interesting.